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Sole, Boiled
The flesh of a boiled sole is tender and delicate, and somewhat resembles turbot in flavour. It is particularly suited for invalids and convalescents. Choose the fish fresh, and very thick--a sole for boiling should weigh at least two pounds. Scale and clean it, remove the fins and gills, but do not take off the brown skin. Put it into plenty of cold water with a table-spoonful of salt and a table-spoonful of vinegar; let the liquor boil, skim carefully, then draw the pan to the side, and let its contents simmer very gently till the fish is done enough. When this point is reached, the flesh will shrink from the bone. In taking up the sole, set the fish-drainer across the kettle for a minute, then lay the fish on a dish, covered with a warm napkin. The white side must be uppermost. Garnish with parsley and cut lemon, and send melted butter, or shrimp, anchovy, caper, lobster, or oyster sauce to table in a tureen. Some cooks plunge the fish into boiling water, and boil it gently until done enough, but it is more usual to put it into cold water. Time to boil the fish, according to size. A good-sized fish will take seven or eight minutes from the time the water boils.
A plain poach, and the whole thing turns on restraint: the fish never boils after the first skim, and it comes out at seven or eight minutes. Everything else is arrangement and sauce.
- Never let it boilThe liquor is brought to the boil, skimmed, then pulled to the side to shiver rather than bubble. A rolling boil tears the delicate flakes apart and squeezes the flesh dry; hold the water at about 170-180F for the whole cooking time.
- Seven or eight minutes is rightSeven or eight minutes -- that is what the book gives, timed from the boil, and it is short by modern habit rather than obviously wrong, sole being a thin-bodied fish that cooks fast. Judge it as the recipe does, by the flesh parting from the backbone at the thick shoulder, and allow longer for a very thick two-pound fish. Carryover under a warm napkin will finish it.
- A two-pound soleA true Dover sole of that weight is a large, expensive fish today and may need ordering ahead. Lemon sole, witch, or a thick plaice all poach well by the same method; adjust to about five minutes for a fish under a pound, and skip the recipe entirely for thin fillets, which need three minutes or less.
- The brown skin stays onThe brown skin stays on. Leaving it gives the fish something to hold it together in the water; the recipe says only that it is not to be removed before cooking, and that the white side goes uppermost on the dish.
- "Plenty of water"Enough to cover by an inch, which for a fish of this size means three to four quarts. One tablespoon of salt in that volume is a very light seasoning by present standards; two or three gives the flesh some savour. The vinegar firms the surface and keeps it white.
- Fish kettle and drainerThe drainer is the perforated plate that lifts the fish out intact. A wide roasting pan with a cake rack, or a straight-sided sauté pan with a foil sling, does the same job. Resting it over the pan for a minute is essential or the poaching liquor floods the serving dish and thins the sauce.
- "Melted butter"In an English kitchen of this date this means a flour-thickened butter sauce rather than simply butter melted in a pan. The shrimp, anchovy, caper, lobster and oyster sauces were generally built on that same base with the named ingredient added, though the shellfish versions often took cream or the shellfish liquor as well.
- YieldA two-pound sole serves two generously or three modestly, with potatoes and the sauce. The recipe gives no quantity because the fish itself is the measure.
Cassell's placed boiled sole among the dishes fit for "invalids and convalescents," and that phrase does a lot of work in a Victorian cookery book. Sickroom cookery was a recognised branch of the household art, with its own logic: nothing fried, nothing highly seasoned, nothing that demanded much of a weak digestion. Poached white fish sat high on that list alongside beef tea, arrowroot and calf's-foot jelly. Sole was among the most highly regarded fish on the Victorian English market, and the spread of the railways widened the inland trade in fresh sea fish generally. The comparison to turbot is a compliment of the period, turbot being one of the grandest boiled fishes an English table could offer. The alternative method noted at the end, plunging into boiling water rather than starting cold, points to a difference of opinion among cooks about whether a cold start draws flavour out into the liquor or simply cooks the fish more evenly; the recipe itself says only that the cold start was the more usual.